I'm always glad to see people adding links to their posts that take the reader to other Mudcat threads for reference. They go a long way toward improving the overall usability of the information here. Still, there is one small change in these links I'd like to see people start making.

When you copy a universal resource locator (URL) to paste into a link, you will have a string similar to the following:

  http://loki.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?ThreadID=32634  

The problem with this form of URL is that it refers to a specific host computer within the Mudcat domain. This can be problematical because not all the Mudcat host computers are up all the time. If

loki

, for example, is down when the link is clicked by a reader, an error will be returned and the target page will not be displayed.

The solution is to delete that portion of the URL that designates a particular host computer. In the example below, I've set the portion to be deleted in bold type.

  http://loki.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?ThreadID=32634  

The resulting link in your post will look something like the example below:

  <a target="_new" href="http:/thread.cfm?ThreadID=32634">your underlined blue text</a>  

Notice that there is only a single slash character following the colon. This convention has the effect of telling the Web server to look for the requested page on the current host, regardless of what it is called. If we build our active links this way, they'll work no matter which hosts happen to active at the time we are using Mudcat. This may also save Max a lot of work someday down the road if he finds he needs to change all the host names.

I hope this explanation is clear. Note that this tip only applies to links that refer to Mudcat pages. Any links pointing to other sites will need the host information in order to be correctly resolved.

      - Mark